Skydiving

Out of 10,000 feet of fall, always remember that the last
half inch hurts the most.

— Captain Charles W. Purcell, 1932

I was on the point of cutting the cord that suspended me
between heaven and earth . . . and measured with my eye the vast space that
separated me from the rest of the human race . . . I felt myself
precipitated with a velocity that was checked by the sudden unfolding of my
parachute.

— Andr—-Jacques Garnerin, world's first parachutist, 22
October 1797.

I watched him strap on his harness and helmet, climb into
the cockpit and, minutes later, a black dot falls off the wing two thousand
feet above our field. At almost the same instant, a while streak behind him
flowered out into the delicate wavering muslin of a parachute — a few
gossamer yards grasping onto air and suspending below them, with invisible
threads, a human life, and man who by stitches, cloth, and cord, had made
himself a god of the sky for those immortal moments.

A day or two later, when I decided that I too must pass
through the experience of a parachute jump, life rose to a higher level, to
a sort of exhilarated calmness. The thought of crawling out onto the struts
and wires hundreds of feet above the earth, and then giving up even that
tenuous hold of safety and of substance, left me a feeling of anticipation
mixed with dread, of confidence restrained by caution, of courage salted
through with fear. How tightly should one hold onto life? How loosely give
it rein? What gain was there for such a risk? I would have to pay in money
for hurling my body into space. There would be no crowd to watch and applaud
my landing. Nor was there any scientific objective to be gained. No, there
was deeper reason for wanting to jump, a desire I could not explain.

It was that quality that led me into aviation in the first
place — it was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure,
the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of man —
where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal
plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless
at the same instant.

Why does one want to walk wings? Why force one's body from a
plane to make a parachute jump? Why should man want to fly at all? People
often ask these questions. But what civilization was not founded on
adventure, and how long could one exist without it? Some answer the
attainment of knowledge. Some say wealth, or power, is sufficient cause. I
believe the risks I take are justified y the sheer love of the life I lead.

— Charles A. Lindbergh

If riding in an airplane is flying, then riding in a boat is
swimming. If you want to experience the element, then get out of the
vehicle.

— Anon.

When the people look like ants — Pull.
When the ants look like people — Pray.

— Anon.

Young man at EAA Oshkosh: "What color are your
parachutes?"Ron Terry, aerobatic pilot: "I don't know and I hope I never find
out!"

Man small
Why fall?
Skies call
That's all.

— Anon.

Yeah, I knew a lot of those guys who parachute jumped at county fairs in
the twenties and thirties, I just never knew any of them for very long.

— Fritz Orchard

Skydiving has been my life, and it will probably be my death
too. But hopefully not yet, for I have many years of jumps left in me.

— Robin Wilcox, four days before dying too soon, 1997.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The
optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.

— Gil Stern

Only skydivers know why the birds sing. They never have to
pack a parachute.

— Anon.

In a world in which we are all slaves to the laws of
gravity, I'm proud to be counted as one of them freedom fighters.
Skydive!

— cliché

Skydivers do it in the stable spread position.

— cliché

I now know the color of fear. . . . It's brown.

— Anonymous skydiver.

And wow! Hey! What's this thing coming towards me very fast?
Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding word
like... ow... ound... round... ground! That's it! That's a good name -
ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?

— Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy.

Once you've thrown your pilot chute, you're done. It's out
of your hands. From that moment on you just enjoy the view or panic.

— Tim Rigby, BASE jumper, quoted in Men's Journal,'
September 2005.

It is one thing to be in the proximity of death, to know
more or less what she is, and it is quite another thing to seek her.

— Ernest Hemingway

Just because nobody complains, it doesn't mean that 100% of the parachutes are working properly.